“My youngest brother at the tender age of three days old was tossed out of the window of a trappers cabin in the middle of winter up by Nelson House, Manitoba. His parents were drunk and decided they didn’t want him anymore. Some merciful soul picked him up and saved his life and he was adopted into my family. “
Y2Kyoto: Snowball Beats Odds
Temperatures reached their lowest point in 30 years, plunging to -2C in the capital, Riyadh, and to -6C in mountainous regions blanketed by snow.
At least 10 people have died in the country as a weather system driven South from Siberia sent temperatures plummeting.
h/t reader James.
More
All The News Unfit To Print
The editor of the Winnipeg Free Press;
provided at least one (unpublished) letter from readers critical of the Crocus Fund, directly to Crocus CEO Sherman Kreiner in Feb. 2003.
Then-editor Nicholas Hirst warned Kreiner “This letter become insidious if followed by others. It suggests there really is something wrong.”
[…]
Hirst explained his emailing the ‘Letter to the Editor’ to Kreiner, “as an example of one of the many letters we are receiving about your fund.” Saying he had already found it “difficult to keep such letters out of the newspaper”, Hirst admonished Kreiner “I was not being light”.
Payback time. Susan Delacourt fesses up – “the Keen controversy is all about us”.
Joan Tintor whacks her with a rolled up newspaper;
Under [the Liberals], Hill reporters were not treated with independence or distance; they were treated as pets to be cultivated and – if deemed sympathetic – rewarded with leaks from inside government, weekly caucus meetings, and not-so-underground leadership campaigns. (Sounds like trifling and playing to me.)
Delacourt’s comments suggest that reporters have decided to take a stand on their independence – by sabotaging it (“How dare Harper treat us like we’re biased, we’ll show him – by being biased!”).
To those who wonder why there is so little competitor interest in the CBC’s professional betrayal in the Erickson-Rodriguez affair – this is your answer. They don’t consider it noteworthy, because they’re not journalists, they’re gatekeepers – and reporting on unethical journalism carries with it the risk of retaliation.
Related: The Globe & Mail sanitizes criticism of radical Islamists.
The Sound Of Settled Science
Following up on a global warming “sweet spot”;
…there is a tendency in the model for greater than average warming in the southeastern and central U.S. and relatively cooler or less than average warming in the western U.S. and much of Europe in the late 1980s and in the 1990s. …
We also notice a tendency for certain patterns in the warming, for example, greater than average warming in the eastern United States and less warming in the western United States.
Lots of cool charts.
As opposed to hot ones.
What Did Szabo Know, And When Did He Ask It?
The Black Rod doesn’t just get under the CBC’s skin – he blisters it;
Cruickshank MUST identify the two Liberal MPs who conspired with CBC reporter Krista Erickson. If one of them is Paul Szabo, then Szabo MUST resign as chairman of the ethics committee before hearings resume.
If Erickson was in touch with Paul Szabo, it means this wasn’t just a “third-rate burglary”—oops, wrong scandal—just a minor flirtation with the Liberal party by a CBC employee. It means it was a carefully planned ambush.
Rodriguez would ask the questions, Szabo would overrule any objections, and Erickson would do a story for the CBC news. As easy as one-two-three.
But we can’t stop there.
It’s fascinating reading, and the names that crop up just keep getting bigger and bigger. Read the whole thing, then pass it along to a friend. One in media would be best.
Reader Tips
Tips thread open.
CWB: Discount Pricing For Prairie Farms
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Via Larry Weber;
“Two days after the last CWB PRO – the difference in cash prices in Ontario and the U.S. is over $5.00 AGAIN. 2008 Crop Hard Red Spring wheat with 12.5 protein or better can be booked in Ontario at $10.02 a bushel. How many of you would lock in $10.00 new crop wheat values off the combine if you had the chance?
But wait, folks – that’s not all!
Today’s “independant farmer” spotting, courtesy the Canadian Press:
“Marketing choice or a dual market is there really to end the wheat board,” Butch Harder, a Manitoba farmer, told a news conference.
Ending the board’s control will turn Prairie agriculture over to businesses, he said.
He said a majority of producers support the board, although a government-sponsored plebiscite last year seemed to support the optional-marketing plan.
Harder and others say the plebiscite was a rigged election worthy of “a banana republic.”
Butch Harder is a former CWB director for District 10.
It’s reporting like that which reminds us of the vast gap between professional journalists and “wanna-be” amateurs like ourselves!
Not Waiting For The Asteroid
“… an unprecedented and sustained deterioration in newspaper ad sales has brought profits in Philadelphia and Minneapolis dangerously close to the point that the new owners won’t be able to remain current on their loans.”
Our Their Woman In Riyadh
Her Excellency Louise Arbour
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
Dear Madame High Commissioner,
We commend you for your statement of January 27, 2008, recognizing the current dangers of racism and anti-Semitism. We are concerned, however, by your statement of a few days earlier, dated January 24, 2008, welcoming the entry into force of the Arab Charter on Human Rights. We trust that you were not aware of the blatantly anti-Semitic statements contained in that charter, as described below. We urge you to issue a clarification on this matter. We also urge you to hold accountable any members of your Office who were or should have been aware of, but failed to call your attention to, these racist provisions.
“Rejecting all forms of racism and Zionism, which constitute a violation of human rights and a threat to international peace and security,” forms part of the opening preamble of the Arab Charter of Human Rights. Article 2 goes further and calls for the outright elimination of Zionism: “All forms of racism, Zionism and foreign occupation and domination constitute an impediment to human dignity and a major barrier to the exercise of the fundamental rights of peoples; all such practices must be condemned and efforts must be deployed for their elimination.”
As you know, Zionism is the movement for Jewish self-determination and asserts the inherent and internationally-acknowledged right of Israel to exist. A text that equates Zionism with racism, describes it as a threat to world peace, as an enemy of human rights and human dignity, and then urges its elimination, is blatantly anti-Semitic.
Y2Kyoto: Narrow Reprieve From Malaria
And a million Saskatchewanians breathe a sigh of relief.
Update – Anthony Watts advises that temperatures this low may spawn rare Nacreous clouds. Watch for them nearer sunset. (Photo at the link)
Reader Tips
Addicted to sneering: “I’ve tried for a few months now to complete my Cultural Insanity series on the dangerous evolutionary dead end that is the progressive, secular humanistic, socialist left.”
“A Lot of Balls details the comically inept attempt in 1987 to launch a “radical” left wing tabloid, The News on Sunday.”
The 13 Steps of Liberals Anonymous.
I have a busy morning. Those should keep you entertained.
It’s Been A Very Good Year
And with a couple of days yet to go, the best month ever;
Sitemeter.
Thanks, everyone!
We Warned You Not To Ride With That Man
Escape From the 16th Century
On Tuesday, Sayed Parwez Kaambakhsh was sentenced to death in a closed trial in a lower court in the northern region of Balkh. He was allowed no legal counsel. He wasn’t even allowed to speak.
[…]
Kaambakhsh, a third-year journalism student at Balkh University, reports for the Jahan-e-Naw newspaper in Mazar-e-Sharif. He was arrested last October on charges of distributing “anti-Islamic propaganda” in the form of an article that originated in Iran that questioned the legitimacy of the Koran’s unequal treatment of men and women.
But Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi, Kaambakhsh’s brother, says even that isn’t true. Ibrahim, a law student at Balkh University, is also a journalist. He’s a staff reporter for IWPR.
Observers say it may well be that the Afghan clerics who sentenced Kaambakhsh are in fact attempting to silence Ibrahimi, who has written critically of regional warlords and government officials. A recent report co-authored by Ibrahimi makes the case that after six years of slow but steady progress on the free-speech front in Afghanistan, 2007 turned out to be the worst year for the suppression of the press since the 2002 liberation.
Pass this story along to your MP.
“What benefit can there be in allowing him to speak?”
Today’s feature exerpt from the Richard Warman Chronicles.
Related: The noose tightens – “Out of 32 million people in Canada we know that 1 out of a possible 341 wrote that message.”
The Best Drudge Headline Ever
Update: Indeed.
The New Media Math
The Boston Globe offers a shocking statistic;
Although Gaza daily requires 680,000 tons of flour to feed its population, Israel had cut this to 90 tons per day by November 2007, a reduction of 99 percent.
You don’t need to be a math genius to figure out that if Gaza has a population of 1.5 million, as the authors also note, then 680,000 tons of flour a day come out to almost half a ton of flour per Gazan, per day.
It could be worse! “It’s a good thing the eeevil Zionists didn’t cut off the essential Stay Puft marshmallow supply.”
Reader Tips
Your tips on this thread.
High In Fiber!
A reader emails, clearly moved by the tragedy of Egypt’s apartheid wall ;
Loved the picture in the Globe and Mail showing all those poor starving Gazans returning home from Egypt carrying carpets. They must know something about nutrition that the western world does not.
David Orchard
The political equivalent of inviting a poltergeist into your home. Long after the exorcism is over, vases keep falling off the shelves.